


our bodies moving in the dark, it takes the pain from me

by starraya



Category: Holby City
Genre: AU, F/F, Sexual Content, please heed the warnings but don't be off put by them, there will be a happy ending I promise, tw: depression, tw: euthanasia, tw: suicide attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-17
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-10-06 08:20:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 17,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10330265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starraya/pseuds/starraya
Summary: After being hit by the IED in Afghanistan Bernie is left paralysed. Her affair with Alex becomes known and her children turn against her.After Elinor dies Serena spirals into severe depression. She is suspended after bullying a F1.Neither of them think they deserve a second chance. That is until they meet each other in 1987.





	1. 1987

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven't watched San Junipero and would like to know a little bit more ahead of reading the next chapters, I've put a brief summary of the premise in the end notes.

 

_Week One (1987)_

The very first time they meet, Serena kills Bernie.

 

(Well, hypothetically.)

 

Bernie is minding her own business, fumbling with a cigarette outside the club. All the noise, the lights, the people got too much for her. Her hands tremble. She breathes out and in. Steadies herself, lifts the cigarette to her lips. Doesn't light.

 

She hears the clap of heels on pavement. Looks up. Spies first a mass of brunette curls, permed to perfection, tumbling from a woman's head. The curls shake as the woman marches on, arms crossed, clamped to her chest. Back rigid. Chin up in the air. Face screwed up in annoyance. The woman steps off the kerb, into the road. Hovers there. Turns. Ready to return into the club. Still, she hovers. Debates.

 

She can feel Bernie's eyes on hers. Watching her. She can see the woman from the corner of her eye. After around a few seconds, she whips her head around. Shoots the stranger a look. Narrows eyes that are winged black and thickened with mascara.

 

"I think you're meant to light it," she huffs. Saunters over to Bernie. Impossibly graceful despite the killer-heels of her thigh-high boots. On the wall beside Bernie the name of the club flashes. The neon light catches the woman's boots, making the shiny-black material gleam.

 

Bernie estimates the woman's her own age or not far off. 21? 22? As the woman nears, Bernie spots the shimmer of her purple eyeshadow. It matches her dress. If you can call the slip of violet material a dress, just skimming her mid-thighs. It slopes off her shoulders, dips in the middle of her chest. What looks like a dozen or so necklaces, clunky and black, knot just below the white of the woman's cleavage.

 

The woman feels Bernie staring. Decides not to call her out on it. (She probably doesn't realise she's doing it.) Instead her eyes focus on Bernie's cigarette.

 

"Go on," she urges, "it can't do you no harm. Not here." Bernie hesitates, cigarette in mouth. Her fingers still tremble ever so slightly.

 

The woman sighs. Swipes the lighter from Bernie. Lifts it up. Bernie leans in and lets the stranger light her cigarette. When she draws back, the woman is smiling at her. The lipstick Bernie took for purple a second before is not. But rather a dark, rich red. Burgundy. The colour of shiraz.

 

It is the woman's smile, as rich and warming as the wine Bernie thinks of, that relaxes Bernie. Has her suddenly spilling out words about giving up smoking, about throwing all her cigarettes out, but keeping one, as a symbol, of her old freedom, her old independence.

 

"Well, this is San Junipero," the woman laughs, "you can have anything you want now." On that last syllable her voice lowers, just a fraction, just an inch. She stretches the word out on her tongue, until it sounds tantalising and mischievous.

 

"All the fun's inside though," the woman says. Cocks her head to the club. Arches her eyebrows skywards. In invitation. What do you say then?

 

Bernie's answer is cut off by a man's shout behind them. "There you are!"

 

The woman’s smile snaps into a scowl.

 

“Go along with whatever I say,” she hisses to Bernie, before turning around to stand by her.

 

“Sorry?”

 

“Whatever I say, go along with it.” The woman curls her arm around Bernie’s waist. Pulls her closer in.

 

“Robbie, I told you –”

 

“I know, but. . . two hours. 35 minutes. There’s not much time left. Let’s use it.”

 

“I _am_ using it.”

 

“Last week we had the most amazing – “

 

“Last week was last week,” the woman tells the newcomer. “I have to talk with my friend here, okay? I haven’t seen her in an awful while.” The woman squeezes Bernie’s waist tighter. “Robbie,” her voice drops low, “she’s ill. Six months to live.”

 

“Five, actually,” Bernie interjects. She’s rewarded with a little sly, smile by the woman. A smile only for her. One the man, Robbie, won’t catch.

 

“I need to catch up with her,” the woman insists, “ _privately_.”

 

“Okay,” the man finally relents.

 

“Okay,” she says.

 

He tells Bernie he’s sorry. (You know about the five months to live.) Bernie’s says that’s okay.

 

“See you around?” He turns away, back to the entrance of the club.

 

“Sure,” the woman says, watching him leave. When he finally does and they’re alone, she groans.

 

“ _Men_. Can’t take a hint. Or several. You tell them it’s a one-time thing, they agree, but before you know it they’re practically down on one knee and –” She realises she's going on. “Sorry,” she says, “and sorry about killing you. The ‘whole six months’ to live. Sorry. Five. Five was a nice touch, by the way.”

 

They both laugh.

 

“Goodness,” the woman says, “I’ve handed you a terminal diagnosis and I don’t even you know you’re name.” She grasps Bernie’s hand, shakes firmly. “Serena Campbell,” she says, smile bright and wide.

 

“Bernie Wolfe.”

 

Bernie shakes Serena’s hand – the woman who sauntered into her life in thigh-high boots and streams of jewellery and purple, glittery eyeshadow and the most dazzling smile known to man, before wrapping one hand around Bernie and inventing a dear, life-long friendship. She isn’t quite sure that Serena’s account of men falling to her feet and proposing within hours of knowing her is hyperbole. Why wouldn’t they, Bernie thinks?

 

Her energy, her charm, her smile is mesmerising. Magnetic. Drawing everyone around her closer, moths to a lamp.

 

It’s the reason that when Serena loosens Bernie’s hand, Bernie immediately misses the feel of her soft skin. It’s the reason that when Serena offers ‘let me get you a drink’, Bernie couldn’t refuse even if she wanted to.

 

-

 

“Two jack and cokes,” Serena orders at the bar. “Or,” she turns to Bernie beside her, “would you rather shots?”

 

“Just coke,” Bernie says.

 

“Two jack and cokes,” Serena tells the barman. “Quick as you can.”

 

When the drinks arrive, Serena lifts her glass. “Cheers.” Bernie taps her glass against Serena’s. Takes a sip of her drink. Winces. Clears her throat.

 

“Never tasted it before?”

 

“No, I . . . I just haven’t had it in a while,” Bernie replies. “It’s good.”

 

Serena leans forward. Rests her chin on her hand. “Do you live here?”

 

“No, oh, uh –”

 

“Tourist?”

 

Bernie’s brow creases as she searches for an answer.

 

“We’ll go for tourist,” Serena says. “So, you’re new here?”

 

“First night,” Bernie admits.

 

“First night? Really. Gosh.” Her eyes glitter. “Better make it a night to remember then.”

 

A song, loud and thumping, blares over the club’s speakers. “God, I love this song,” she laughs, “We _have_ to dance with this.”

 

“With each other?”

 

Serena nods, takes a gulp of her drink.

 

“Oh no, I haven’t – I can’t . . . dance.”

 

“Tosh. Anyone can dance,” Serena says, slipping off her bar stool. “Come on.”

 

“No, I can’t.”

 

“Yes, you can, come on.” She takes Bernie’s hand and drags her onto the dancefloor. “I’ll teach you,” she promises. Before Bernie knows it, she is in the centre of the dancefloor, surrounded by bodies and Serena is in front of her, grinning. “Copy me,” she says.

 

Serena's eyes latch onto Bernie's, the intensity of her brown eyes locking Bernie to the spot. She steps side to side, raising her shoulders, left then right and shifting her hips in perfect rhythm to the pulsations of the - nearly - unbearably loud music. And there is only one word for the movement of her body: hypnotic. It transfixes Bernie. Drugs her, almost. Until the room swirls around her, around her and Serena, until all the people around them, their the faces and arms and feet blend into one black cloud, encircling them like a storm. And they're both in the eye. Where everything is slower. Every movement longer. Every pulse of the music, of Serena's body as she dances, stretches out. Her long, permed hair moves from side to side. Flows from side to side in this altered version of reality. Her cheeks are flushed. Her chest too. She is smiling, saying something to Bernie, but Bernie can't make out the words. Can only stand and watch her lips. No longer purple or burgandy, but scarlet and wet and glinting in the pulsating gold and blue lights of the club. Everything is pulsating, Bernie thinks. The room. Her own heartbeat. But slowly. Each pulse stretching out longer and longer, slower and slower, until it turns into a constant throb of sound and movement. The pulse of a heart momentarily stopped.

 

Bernie can't breathe. Can't think. Can't do nothing but watch Serena.

 

Then she exhales. Air bursts out her lungs. The spell cast on her (by the music, by Serena) slips.  All the other people on the dancefloor rush back into focus. Clear as daylight. They’re all watching Serena. All watching Bernie. Everyone around is staring at them; dozens of eyes pierce through the smoky gloom of the club. Bernie’s skin, already warm within the stuffy club, begins to burn. Everyone is staring. At them. Can’t Serena see? Bernie shifts from one foot to the other. Wipes her clammy hands on her shorts.

 

Still dancing, still smiling, Serena turns her head to one side. When she turns back, Bernie has disappeared, the crowds of people she wove her way through already converging over her exit path.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you haven't watched San Junipero (ep 4 of Black Mirror S3) go watch it. It is truly one of the best hours of TV I have watched and the best piece of queer media of 2016 (aside from Berena of course). 
> 
> ***
> 
> San Junipero is a digital universe, a database basically, where your consciousness can be uploaded after death. The elderly and the dying are allowed, for a certain time each week, for five hours on a Saturday night, to act as 'tourists' and undergo a trial run to see whether they want to live forever in the party town. You are free to choose a reality, any decade you want and you can travel between each reality. In San Junipero, you can look like you're in your twenties again and remain forever young if you wish.


	2. 1987 (part two)

_Week One (1987)_

 

It’s raining hard. Bernie leans back against the wall, looking down at her feet. Raindrops are trickling down her legs. Sneaking their way through the holes in her sandals. But the water isn’t cold. Strange. It feels warm. Nice. Even if it is soaking through her striped shirt. Drenching her hair, so that her fringe hangs limp and wet over her eyes. She likes it. The rain.

 

Serena, running out of the club, arms wrapped her chest and shivering, doesn’t seem to agree.

 

“Bernie,” she calls, “Where do you run off to?”

 

“Sorry,” Bernie mumbles, peeking up from under her fringe. “I . . . I said I’m not too much of a dancer.”

 

“Yeah. You’re looked a bit . . . tense.”

 

“All the people . . . “

 

“Claustrophobic?” Serena wonders, eyes soft and searching.

 

“No, it’s not that, it’s – “

 

“Didn’t scare you off, did I?” Bernie shakes her head, but Serena is already apologising.

 

“Sorry I pushed you into it. Saturday nights. Once a week. It’s no time at all. I get impatient.”

 

“Carpe noctum.” It is little more than a murmur.

 

“Sorry?”

 

“Seize the night.”

 

“Yeah, I do tend to get carried away with that,” Serena admits.

 

“It wasn’t that. It wasn’t you, well it was, but . . .”

 

Serena arches an eyebrow. Gives Bernie a puzzling look.

 

“Everyone was staring,” Bernie says, “at us.”

 

“So?”

 

“Two girls dancing. Together.”

 

“Don’t worry,” Serena reassures, “because one: people are a lot more relaxed than they used to be; two: San Junipero is a party town, no one’s judging; and three: if they are, well they need to get over it or they can politely F.O.H.”

 

“F.O.H?”

 

“I’ll give you a clue. The last two words are ‘off’ and ‘home’.”

 

Bernie laughs at that, a great, honking goose laugh. And Serena can’t help but laugh in response. Laugh until her side aches.

 

“I haven’t urm . . . been on a dancefloor in a while.”

 

“How long’s a while?”

 

“Long,” Bernie says.

 

“Making up for lost time?”

 

“Something like that.”

 

“Well then, what would you like to do? Something that you haven’t done in a while?”

 

“Oh . . . “ Bernie ponders the question. “I’d like to do a lot of things.” Bernie smiles at the thought, of all things she could possibility do in San Junipero, all the things she couldn’t do before. But a flicker of guilt crosses her face when she remembers that there’s a lot of things she wishes she hadn’t done in her life. Before she can become consumed by regret, Serena’s voice gently tugs her back to the present.

 

“Such as?” Serena moves closer to Bernie. Bernie pretends not to notice. “Carpe noctum,” she says, repeating Bernie’s earlier words and Bernie can feel Serena’s breath hot on her neck. Can smell the smoke on her clothes, from inside, and a spark of vodka, mixed with hairspray and another scent, perfume, heavy, intoxicating, that Bernie can’t pin down. “Although,” Serena adds, “there’s not much left of it. Only two hours until midnight.”

 

“Oh, that’s not long,” is all Bernie can stutter out when Serena leans in closer.

 

“Well-observed,” she says, “let’s not waste it.” She raises her arm, grazes the pads of her fingers from Bernie’s bare wrist to her elbow. Bernie looks down at her perfectly-manicured, scarlet nails. Forgets to breathe as Serena’s touch lights a fire under her skin. She jumps away as if burned.

 

“I, um, Serena . . . “

 

“It’s okay.”

 

“No, I mean – “

 

“Really, Bernie, it’s fine.”

 

“No, I, uh, I’m married. I have a husband.” If Serena’s shocked, she doesn’t show it. Just lets Bernie explain, as best as she can. And that explanation only amounts to three words. “He’s called Dom," Bernie says, and she knows she’s making excuses – stumbling through them like she’s running along a rocky, untraversed path – and Serena seems to sense something's off. 

 

“And is Dom here?”

 

Bernie shakes her head. And Serena, definitely not lying before about her hunger for life, her hunger for seizing the night, jumps straight to the point and, voice as rich and warm and smooth as liquor, asks Bernie if she wants to go to bed with her. Her place is practically two minutes away, she says.

 

Bernie feels her every muscle tighten. She scrunches up her face. It’s all too fast. Her head can’t catch up. And her heart, beating a million times a minute, isn’t much help either. She was a trauma surgeon. Once upon a time. Making split-second decisions was her bread and butter. Her brain assessing the crisis and thinking up solutions and assessing the risks and her hands, heaving up broken bodies, holding them together, slicing them open and stitching them up, putting those thoughts into action mere seconds later.

 

In war zones, unpredictability was a certainty. In surgery, as well. No matter how well planned. You had to be flexible. Had to adapt. Bernie was once one of the best trauma surgeons in the world. But that was a long time ago. Would she even recognise a scalpel now? Her surgical ability used to be the one thing she had absolute confidence in. Her ability to think on her feet.

 

But this isn’t a warzone or surgery and Bernie’s not the woman she once was.

 

She rubs her hands together, awkwardly. Again and again. Her gaze drops to the floor.

 

“I can’t,” she murmurs. And she hates how small her voice is. She hates how, when, out of some sort of shame, of apology, she looks back up at Serena and reads the question in her eyes. _What are you scared of?_

 

 _Everything_ , Bernie thinks. An inappropriate laugh bubbles in her chest. She squashes it down, along with the self-pity.

 

“I can’t,” she says again.

 

“It’s okay,” Serena says softly, “I understand.”

 

Bernie feels ridiculous. It’s just sex. Nothing more. Just a one night, spur of the moment, thing. With a beautiful girl with warm eyes and a smile that could outshine any star and a voice, that if it were a colour, would be as deep a red as sin, as rich a red as shiraz. A girl who’s only said Bernie’s name a handful of times that night, but every time she does, it sounds like poetry.

 

“I have to go,” Bernie says.

 

“Alright.”

 

And there is no ‘see you around’s on either side or ‘maybe next time you need a chat and a vodka (sorry, coke) or two you should just call me’ or anything else said between them. Hands fisted at her sides, Bernie walks away. Pauses, after six footsteps.

 

“Shit,” she breathes out. Peers up at the sky, through the rain. It’s grey and cloudy. Definitely not nice. Not warm, like she thought. She squeezes her eyes shut and remembers Serena’s fingers on her arm. Spins round. The street is empty. Serena has gone.

 

-

 

_Week Two (1987)_

 

“It was just sex,” Serena says. None too delicately. But sometimes you have to lay it out it clear. Dig the knife in a little, so you can cut loose. Fit would be far less painful if Robbie would actually listen to her.

 

“No, we made a connection.”

 

“Robbie, it was just sex.”

 

“No – “

 

“Yes. Just some fun,” Serena says. “No ties.” At Robbie’s crumpled expression, she cups his cheek with her hand. “And we had fun."

 

“But that’s all it was?”

 

“I’m sorry,” Serena breezes, kisses him briefly on the cheek and walks away.

 

“Enjoy the town,” she calls, not looking back once.

 

She is in the club again, drinking alone at the bar when a man chats her up. Asks her if she’ll like another drink. Okay, she says. Just a drink. The newcomer thinks she’s acting coy. Serena is just wise enough now to never refuse a free drink. At a table, they sit together at the bar, drinking. The man – she hasn’t caught his name yet, she can’t say she really cares – is rattling out anecdotes about his many surgeries, kneecaps, hips, heart – by the time he was ready to pop his clogs, he jokes, his whole body had broken down. The hospital had become a second home.

 

A hospital was once Serena’s second home, or rather, her place of work. It feels like a lifetime ago, now. Surgery bays and ugly curtains and the smell of disinfectant. A heart monitor, flat-lining. A cold, limp hand in her own. Years later, the scratch of the hospital gown against her back. Her own heartbeat on the monitor, stubborn and resilient. Serena scratches her nails lightly against her thighs. Too hard and she risks catching her stockings. Her dress is short, and when she’s sat down, rides up, exposing a strip of skin above her knee. And that’s where she runs her nails when the man talks of hospitals.

 

She doesn’t like to think about it. She doesn’t want to think about it. Not now.

 

Trying to distract herself, she keeps taking sips of her drink. Finishes it quickly. (The boy breaks his speech to offer her another. She nearly says yes, thinking again of surgery bays and ugly curtains and the smell of disinfectant, but catches herself before falling into the trap. Into the promise of drink-induced oblivion.) Serena tears a paper napkin in her lap. Glances around the club. That’s when she spots Bernie across the room.

 

“Shall we dance?” She asks the man, jumping off her bar stool.

 

“Sure,” he says.

 

And Serena tries to focus on nothing else but the music, let it flow over her body and carry her like a river. As she does every Saturday night. But she can’t lose herself in the music and it annoys her. It annoys her because she knows Bernie’s watching her, and although Serena smiles and she laughs and she dances, she annoys herself because Serena looks back. Can’t help sneak glances through the arms of other dancers. Watches Bernie’s face gradually harden. Watches her turn around. Walk away.

 

Serena has a ripped-half of a napkin curled within her hand, hidden. And she clutches it tighter.

 

-

 

She catches Bernie’s eye again, this time directly, deliberately, when she is back sitting next to the man (she still doesn’t know his name. He could take her to bed tonight, and she still wouldn’t ask. It makes forgetting him that much easier. Detaching his face from the sex. The emotional from the physical. Serena knows she’s a terrible person. Knows she doesn’t feel properly, anymore. That something’s missing within her, vital and unnameable. It was taken from her though, years ago, and so she doesn’t even feel terrible about being terrible. Doesn’t feel guilt.)

 

She doesn’t feel any stab of guilt when she smiles at Bernie across the table, brown eyes meeting brown eyes across the room. She doesn’t feel any stab of guilt when she excuses herself to the bathroom, knowing Bernie will follow her and when she does, Serena doesn’t feel any stab of guilt for ignoring Bernie who approaches her like a lost puppy looking for a home.

 

Serena peers into the bathroom mirror. Reapplies her lipstick. She hasn’t got nothing to say, not unless Bernie says something first. Bernie doesn’t look at her. Doesn’t even look into the mirror and meet Serena’s eye there.

 

“I don’t know how do this,” Bernie says.

 

“Do what?” Serena runs a hand through her permed hair.

 

“This,” Bernie says, gestures vaguely.

 

“Are you even married?” Serena asks, abruptly, still in looking in the mirror. Away from Bernie.

 

“What? Uh, no. Well I was, but – “

 

“So, you lied,” Serena levels. “You stumbled over the words when you told me.”

 

“I stumble over nearly every word I say,” Bernie says, finding her voice and a wit probably not most time-appropriate.

 

“So, you didn’t lie?”

 

“Yes, no. Is that what you’re angry about?”

 

“I’m not angry. I’m just . . . I knew you wanted to run a hundred miles. But you didn’t have to make up excuses.”

 

"I’m not married, but I will be. Soon. Dom’s my finance.”

 

“But the marriage means a lot to you?"

 

“No, yes. It’s complicated.”

 

“In what way?”

 

“The arranged way. I don’t want to talk about it, not now.” Bernie almost pleads with her, and Serena doesn’t push anymore. Bernie has told the truth. As much as she can manage. And Serena knows that feeling too well.

 

“Well you didn’t have to lie,” Serena says, “if you didn’t want me – “

 

“It’s wasn’t that.” Serena’s head snaps to her left. To Bernie. “I told you I just haven’t done this before," Bernie says. "Well, not in a while. Will you just . . . help me? Make it easier for me?"

 

The desire to make things that little easier, that little more bearable – by whatever means possible – Serena knows as well. Knows acutely. She turns to Bernie, and realises the woman is trembling. She lifts her hand to Bernie’s cheek, skims her fingers down to Bernie’s chin and gently tilts her head up, so Bernie’s looking at her. So Serena’s looking at her. Into eyes lost and searching. And it isn’t indifference that fills Serena, or even pity, or sympathy. It’s much more. It’s raw, pure understanding. An affinity between them both.

 

“Want to get in my car?” She says.

 

Bernie nods.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments honestly make my entire day.


	3. 1987, 1997 & 2007

_Week Three (1987)_

 

Bernie's screwed it up. She knows she's screwed it up. She just doesn’t know how. It was just sex. Just a one time, spur of the moment, thing. But, of course, it wasn’t.

 

-

 

_Week Two (1987)_

Serena drives like she’s not afraid of anything. Not even death. Bernie can’t see any speed limit signs along the empty stretch of road, but she knows they’re breaking them. Significantly.

 

Bernie clutches on to the door handle. Tries not to think about the speed. Bernie looks up at the night sky. At the stars. She wonders how many of them are dead. Someone, she can’t remember who, once told her that they could be dead thousands and thousands of miles away, but, to our eye, still shining. They’re still dead. Time just hasn’t caught up yet.

 

“How long have you been here?” Bernie asks Serena.

 

“In San Junipero? Uh . . . couple of months. Plan is long enough to have a good time. Guess I’m a tourist here, like you.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Bernie turns away, thinks of the stars again.

 

“Bernie?” Serena calls her attention back. “You okay?”

 

“Yeah.” Bernie says, and it’s the truth. She can hear the sea now. The fluttering of its ebb and flow. Soon they’ll be at the coastline. Serena’s home. Serena smiles at her and Bernie smiles back. Neither of them look ahead at the road.

 

There’s the honk of a car. A scream (from Bernie’s mouth, although she doesn’t recognise it).

 

“Stop!”

 

Serena turns the steering wheel rapidly, swerves them away from the oncoming car and off the road. Brakes. The screech of tyres echoing in their ears, hearts thudding, both women pant.

 

Serena recovers quickly, a smile breaking out on her face. (She’s hasn’t felt this alive in years.) Bernie doesn’t share her exhilaration and Serena’s smile slips when she sees Bernie face, contorted in shock. Her breathing not slowing down, but speeding up.

 

“Breathe. In for four seconds, out for four,” Serena instructs, “through the nose.”

 

“What?” Bernie gasps for breath.

 

Serena hand settles on Bernie’s thigh, warm and steady. “Berenice. _Breathe_.”

 

And Bernie does. Centres her mind on the image of the sea at first, but she can’t hear it anymore. Instead, she curls her hand around Serena’s. Centres her mind instead of the feel of Serena’s skin and the weight of their enjoined hands on her thigh. Counts to four. Breathes out. Counts for four again. Repeats the process several times over.

 

Serena tells her to take her time. As long as she likes.

 

“I’m okay,” Bernie says, after a bit.

 

“You sure?”

 

Bernie nods.

 

“Still want to come back to mine?”

 

Bernie nods again.

 

As Serena starts up the car, Bernie thanks her. Smiles. Tells Serena never again to call her Berenice.

 

“Or you’ll do what exactly?” Serena laughs. “Put me over your knee and spank me?”

 

“I’m serious.”

 

“So am I, _Bernie._ ” Serena tries to keep her voice straight, as firm as a school matron’s, but it cracks. They both dissolve into fits of giggles as Serena drives them back onto the road.

 

“How did you know it was Berenice?” Bernie asks.

 

“You don’t look like a Bernadette,” Serena says.

 

-

 

They pull up at a beach house. Large and white. With potted plants on the veranda and shimmery blue curtains floating behind the shuttered windows.

 

Neither of them say a word as Serena leads Bernie inside.

 

“What do you think?”

 

Bernie gazes around in wonder. At the space. “It’s . . . large.”

 

“In my youth,” she explains, “I spent some time in America. It reminds of that.”

 

They’re right by the sea. Bernie can hear the waves. “It’s peaceful,” she says.

 

Serena leans on a chair. Unzips her boots. Curses the heel.

 

Bernie wonders around the house. Skimming her fingertips across cabinets and photo frames. She picks up one. Of a girl with brown eyes and long hair and a cleft in her chin.

 

“Miss your mum?”

 

Serena doesn’t say anything and Bernie, gently, places the photograph back down. Feels like she’s intruding, prodding through Serena’s personal belongings.

 

Serena drifts towards her. Without her shoes on, Bernie notices that she’s slightly shorter than her. _Just._

 

The room is dark, except for a lamp in the corner and it throws shadows over Serena’s face. Lights a glimmer in her eye, when she moves closer to Bernie, pupils dark and wide.

 

Her hands reach for the lapels of Bernie’s jacket. But don’t tug, or flutter down. They just stay there. Holding on lightly. Serena’s eyes lower, flicker over Bernie’s lips. But she doesn’t lean in. Just holds on to Bernie.

 

Bernie is overcome with a bravery she hasn’t felt all night. Perhaps, ever.

 

She leans in. Captures Serena’s lips within her own. Closes her eyes for the briefest of moments, before pulling back. Checks Serena’s expression. Bernie’s hand hovers awkwardly, curled in a fist, on against Serena's shoulder and when Serena, eyelids fluttering shut, crushes her mouth on Bernie’s once more, Bernie’s hand flattens, fingers gliding up and around Serena’s neck before entangling in Serena’s hair. Bernie moans when Serena slips her tongue into her mouth, probes against Bernie’s own whilst simultaneously winding her fingers through Bernie’s hair. Pulling her even closer.

 

Every movement of their lips and tongues growing fiercer, hungrier, Bernie wonders why this other woman, someone she’s only known one week, tastes so acutely and inexplicably of home.

 

-

 

_Week Three (1987)_

 

She’s screwed it up, no question about it. She’s Bernie Wolfe after all. She was born a fully-certified member of club screw-up. All week she looked forward to seeing Serena again, but when she arrives at the club she’s nowhere to be seen. Bernie asks the bartender if he’s seen her, but he says no, not all all night. On her way out the club Bernie runs into Robbie, bottle in his hand and already more than a little tipsy.

 

“I know you from somewhere,” he slurs. “You’re Serena’s friend.”

 

“Do you know where to find her?”

 

“How would I know that?” The man takes a swig of his drink, turns rudely away from Bernie.

 

“You’re her friend.”

 

“Not anymore.” The man whips back around.

 

“Do you know where she is?”

 

“No.”

 

He sounds bitter and scorned, but he sounds like’s he’s telling the truth. Bernie’s face falls.

 

Robbie laughs. “You too?”

 

Bernie turns to leave.

 

“Hey,” he offers, “try a different time. I’ve seen her here, the eighties, the nineties, even 2007.”

 

Bernie nods thanks.

 

“She’s worth a shot, right?”

 

“Yeah, I just feel –“ Bernie begins to explain, before wishing she didn’t as Robbie offers her another piece of advice.  A word to the wise, he says. “Serena doesn’t do feelings. Hell, I don’t even know if she has them.”

 

With that, Bernie leaves the club. Steps on to the street. Breathes in. And out. Four counts. Like Serena taught her. The man’s a fool, Bernie thinks. Serena’s worth so much more than just ‘a shot’. She’s worth everything. Bernie remembers last week, the white walls of the beach house and the sound of the waves, rushing forth, drawing back, whispering again and again only words she and Serena could hear.

 

Bernie remembers Serena in her arms. On top of her. Moving above her. Grinding down against her thigh, breath ragged. Bernie remembers kissing her again and again, each kiss already tasting of the familiar, but always slightly different to the last. A different texture. A different heat. A different sweetness.

 

Bernie remembers Serena moaning into her mouth, body shuddering from her climax. Bernie remembers looking into Serena eyes and moving away the fringe that had plastered to Serena’s forehead. Bernie remembers Serena, voice shaky, telling Bernie she should be doing that to her. Her hair was practically a bird’s nest, Serena jokingly admonished.

 

Bernie remembers Serena kissing her lips, feather-light, before moving down. Resting her head just above Bernie’s breast.

 

“That’s no way to charm a girl.” Bernie chuckled, hands stroking Serena’s damp hair.

 

“I thought I already had,” Serena replied and Bernie felt her smile against her skin.

 

-

 

_Week Three, Four & Five_

 

Bernie tries the eighties. Every year in fact. But it’s no good, Serena’s nowhere to be found and before Bernie knows it, midnight strikes.

 

The following week she tries the nineties. The cars are different and the clothes and the music, but the club’s still as loud and raucous as ever. Bernie searches every inch.

 

She walks to Serena’s house. (Surprises herself by remembering the path perfectly.) Her knock on the door receives no answer. Bernie seats on the edge of the veranda. Watches the sea. Loses any sense of time, and is still there, gazing aimlessly, when midnight comes.

 

Another week goes by. Saturday night arrives. She skips ahead another decade. To 2007.

 

Bernie searches the club, like before, but this time she finds a set of stairs. Climbs. Enters the top of the floor of the club. Impossibly, you can’t hear the pop music blaring below. The music up here is slower, quieter. The walls have more paint on them. The chairs and tables far less dirt. From a corner of the room, a woman sits chatting to a man. Her voice is unmistakable. It guides Bernie like a candle through the darkened room.

 

Serena doesn’t notice her at first. Continues chatting.

 

Bernie summons what courage she has left; these past weeks her reserves have rapidly run out.

 

“Serena,” she says.

 

Serena stops mid-word.

 

Bernie finds herself looking into familiar, warm brown eyes, but they are creased at the corners with lines that Bernie hasn’t seen before. There are more at the sides of Serena’s mouth. Her hair is no longer permed, but short and cropped. Slightly grey at the temples.

 

“Bernie,” she gasps. Before standing up and hurrying past Bernie. Before walking away.

 

But this time, Bernie won’t let her.


	4. 1987 & 2007

_Week Two (1987)_

Serena pushes Bernie back on the bed. Straddles her hips. Reaches down and kisses her, long and slow. Pulls back.

 

“This okay?”

 

“Yeah . . . it’s just I haven’t done . . . this in a while.”

 

“Don’t worry,” Serena says, “We can go slow.” Serena leans back on her knees, so she is sat up straight. “If you want.”

 

“Have you . . . I mean . . . were you drinking? In the club?”

 

“A bit,” Serena says, puzzled before reading Bernie’s expression. “Only a bit. Trust me,” Serena makes a point of raking her desire-blown eyes down Bernie’s body, “I can think clearly.” Bernie swallows a gulp.

 

“Besides,” Serena adds, “The settings . . . you can have them so you don’t feel it. So, you don’t get drunk. No matter how much you drink.” Serena reaches for the hem of her dress and pulls it up over her head in one clean sweep. She tosses it on the floor.

 

“I want this,” Serena says, and it is as much a question as a reassurance.

 

“Same,” Bernie breathes, eyes taking in Serena’s half-naked form.

 

“Good,” Serena smiles. Takes Bernie’s hand within her own and lifts it to her breast. Bernie cups it. Feels the firmness and fullness beneath the black, lacy material of Serena’s bra.

 

She is just about to reach up and around for the clasp, when Serena leans down. Claims Bernie’s mouth in a hungry kiss.  Serena’s hands skate down Bernie’s chest, start unbuttoning her shirt. They fumble for the belt on her shorts. The zip.

 

-

 

_Week Five (2007)_

 

“Serena, no,” Bernie runs after Serena. Her hands skim the fabric of her black evening dress. “Wait a minute.”  

 

Serena spins around. “Why are you here?”

 

“I was looking for you. Where did you go?”

 

“I like a change in music.”

 

“You hid from me,” Bernie levels.

 

“One, I didn’t. Two, I don’t owe you anything.”

 

Bernie lets Serena leave. Stands momentarily dumbstruck. Remembers Robbie’s words. _Serena doesn’t feel._ Bernie remembers the night she and Serena spent together. Follows her into the Ladies bathroom.

 

-

 

_Week Two (1987)_

 

Serena kisses her way down Bernie’s neck, along the curve of her collarbone, before moving down to her breasts. She attends to each one in turn, swirling her tongue around each nipple, before taking it into her mouth and sucking. Bernie hears sounds coming out her own mouth, of their accord, whimpers and moans and guttural, undefinable sounds, as Serena’s mouth moves down her torso, kissing her way down to Bernie’s hips.

 

“Serena, _please_.”

 

Serena looks up. Meets Bernie’s eyes.

 

The confirmation she looks for in them is already there.

 

She kisses her way back up Bernie’s body, along the same path but quicker this time. Moves her head up and her hand down. Finds slick folds.

 

“Serena.” Bernie moans, and the name fall from her lips again and again – in between other sounds, some words, some not – sometimes her name is dragged from somewhere deep inside her, other times it bursts out, short and quick, like the beginning of a prayer – her only one, seemingly the only one Bernie will ever need.

 

-

 

_Week Five (2007)_

 

“It’s not about who owes who,” Bernie says, the door of the bathroom swinging shut behind her. “It’s about manners. You don’t know who I am. You don’t know what this means.”

 

“This,” Serena turns to her, “means fun. One last roll of the dice. One more go at the game. That’s all.”

 

“So, I was what . . . just a piece in the game, something for you to use and toss aside?”

 

“I didn’t mean it like that, but, Bernie our little . . . dalliance – “

 

Bernie scoffs. “It was simply old-hat for you? Right.”

 

Serena loses her temper. “This means fun. Or it should. And this,” Serena gestures between them, “is not fun.”

 

“So, you don’t feel bad?” Bernie asks. “Maybe you should feel bad. Or at least feel something.”

 

With that, Bernie turns on heel and leaves.

 

Serena curls her fist. Aims it at the mirror.  Fractures erupt from the centre. The cracked shards distort her reflection. But only for a moment. Before the mirror rights itself. Mends. Becomes whole. Serena draws back her hand. Flexes her fingers. There’s no blood. No pain. Nothing. The skin of her knuckles is unbroken. 

 

Of course, in San Janipero you can adjust the settings. Subscribe to a feeling of numbness. Where’s there no pain. No hurt. Except for the hurt you inflict on others.

 

-

 

Serena runs out the club. She passes Ric, still sitting in the corner of the bar and calls out one excuse: “It’s her.” Ric nods back in understanding. _Her_ has been the only thing on his friend’s lips this evening. Even if Serena had told him that nothing had happened, that it was, really, nothing, every piece of evidence suggested otherwise. He hasn’t seen Serena smile, like she had – her cheeks flushed, her eyes sparkling – in years and years.

 

Outside the club, Serena asks anyone who listen if they’ve seen a girl. Tall and slim. A couple on the street point behind her. To the roof of a building. Her eyesight’s not what it once was, but Serena can still make out a figure _,_ Bernie, perched on the edge of the roof.

 

Goodness, Serena thinks, this woman truly never does things by halves. The little joke does nothing to settle her quickening heartbeat. She peers up. For a split second, she doesn’t see Bernie. She sees another woman, standing at the edge. Serena sees her shaking. Sees the tears streaming down her face. She sees the woman squeeze her eyes shut. Her brain shuts down the memory. Like snapping down the lid on a camera lens.

 

“Bernie,” she yells, knowing that the other woman can’t hear her. You can’t hear much up there. On rooftops. And what you can hear, it’s all distorted. Like you’re underwater. You can hear the cars below, but they’re faint and far off. You can hear the screech of the wind. You can hear your own heart. The blood rushing in your ears. Too loud. Too persistent. Too overwhelming.

 

Serena kicks off her high heels. Climbs the stairs. Up to the roof. Up to Bernie.


	5. 1987 & 2007 (part two)

_Week Two (1987)_

 

They are lying in bed, facing each other. Bodies still a little flushed. Still a little bit breathless. The bedroom window is open and the curtains flap in the wind, but the salt-tinged air that sweeps through the room isn't cold. It's cool on their sweat-sheened skin. Outside, Bernie can hear the roll of the waves, in and out. A feeling of utter calmness suffuses throughout her body. Moonlight spills into the room. Dyes the blackness into grey. In the darkness, Bernie feels a bravery she hasn't felt in years. She inches closer to Serena. She whispers words into the small space between them, into the darkness, like the night is their canvas, one they both share and one only they can read.

 

“When did you know," Bernie ventures, "that you liked women?”

 

“I like men too," Serena smiles.

 

“When did you know though, that you liked both?”

 

“I was married to a man for a fair few years. Quite unfortunately.”

 

“Unfortunate how?”

 

“Let’s just say I was one who filed for the divorce.” Serena sighs. “He was a, well take your pick, a liar, a cheat, an alcoholic.”

 

“Total waste of space?” Bernie offers.

 

“Very nearly,” Serena chuckles.

 

“An alcoholic. Must have been hard for you. Is that why you don’t drink . . . well, I mean you don’t –”

 

“He was hard to live with,” Serena agrees, avoiding Bernie’s question. (Edward’s reliance on alcohol wasn’t why she gave it up, many years ago.)

 

“Addiction’s an illness and he didn’t he want or try to get better. It was difficult. He was difficult. But,” she smiles, “we divorced. I got back out there. Dated a couple of men, nothing really serious. And then . . . there was Stepney.”

 

“Stepney?”

 

“I didn’t always know, that I liked women. I was rather a late-bloomer in the Sapphic department. I was in my forties and there was this party in Stepney. An old-school friend’s. I rather think she invited me out of pity. Knew I’d divorced. Hadn’t really met anyone since. She probably thought I needed some fun. A good shag. God, she must have tried to hook me up, four, five times that night? Felt like I’d been dragged along speed-dating. I was trying to hide when I met Kate. We’d both snuck out to the garden. She said she couldn’t stand the noise. I said I couldn’t stand the men. She said she knew the feeling. We stayed in the garden together. Promised not to rat each other out. She’d smuggled out a bottle of wine from the house and we drank it on the steps of the garden patio. Got chatting. Can’t really remember what about. I remember it was bloody freezing though. She offered me her jacket. I said it was my own fault I’d left mine inside. And then, she kissed me. And . . . “

 

“And?”

 

“And it was unexpected, at first. But nice. More than nice." At the memory Serena's lips upturn. She is clearly fond of the woman. Was clearly fond of her. A jealously, of this stranger, this woman she doesn't know, a jealously she has no right to feel strikes Bernie. Bernie tries to squash it down. Serena is opening up to her, giving her the answers Bernie asked for, and at the very last Bernie should listen without letting her mind get distracted by such juvenile feelings.

 

"She gave me her number," Serena continues her story, "we texted a few times but we never met up again. It just didn’t happen. I think she wanted to leave at the party and I was okay with that.”

 

“Her loss,” Bernie says jokingly.

 

“I heard later she got engaged to her childhood-sweetheart. They’ve wives now. I wonder what’d she say if she knew she was the reason for my gay awakening. After the party, I started looking at women, well in a different way. Started questioning. I convinced myself at one point that the whole thing in Stepney was some experimental mid-life crisis and that I was just kidding myself. But the more I thought about, the more I realised kidding myself would be if I told myself I was still a dyed-in-the-wool heterosexual. And . . . I realised another thing something that had been in front of my eyes my entire life.”

 

“What’s that?”

 

“Girls are bloody hot.”

 

Bernie laughs, loudly. It's free and infectious. And Serena laughs with her. When their laughter dissolves into the air and the only sound again is of the sea, Serena props her elbow up and rests her head in one hand.

 

“When did you know?”

 

Bernie takes a breath. She has only ever talked about this part of her to Dom, and even then, that wasn't face-to-face. It was across a computer. Nothing like this. Lying naked next to a woman she's just made love with, darkness clothing them both and the sound of their breathing falling into the same rhythm.

 

“It was . . . it was always there, I think. I didn’t realise until my late teens, but there were crushes," Bernie murmurs. "God, were there crushes. I’d be attracted to this girl with pretty brown eyes in class, to this teacher who always smiled me, to the waitress serving me in some café somewhere. But I never did anything about it. Never acted on it. And in my twenties, I met Marcus.”

 

“Husband?”

 

“Ex, yeah. He urm . . . died. A year back.”

 

“God, Bernie, I’m so – “

 

“We’d been . . . separated for a while before then.”

 

“Is he here? In town?”

 

“Oh, no, he refused it. Flat-out. Religious grounds.”

 

“Fair enough. His choice,” Serena says but she can sense something else in Bernie's voice. Anger? Regret?

 

“Yeah, I just wish that, perhaps, that I could have talked to him again, properly. Had a second chance, I dunno, to explain things.”

 

“Messy divorce?”

 

“Something like that. Relationships weren’t really my forte.”

 

“What about those with the fairer sex?”

 

“Oh, well, there was this one woman.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“But things . . . ended badly.”

 

“Did you love her?”

 

“I think so.” For the first time since their conversation began, Bernie's eyes flit away from Serena's. 

 

Serena knows not to push. She's intrigued, though. She wonders who the woman was. Who exactly she was to Bernie. How long they were together. If she's in San Junipero. If she knows Bernie's in San Junipero, and if she doesn't and finds out, if she will look for Bernie. Bernie said things ended badly. But San Junipero is nothing but a place of chances, new ones, missed ones, second ones. People can, if they wish, have the second life they never had. Serena herself only wants a little more time. Before she goes on her way, just a little fun. She's just soaking it all up, passing through. That's all. And while she's here, she's determined to live it to the full.

 

She grabs Bernie's hand in hers. “Fancy doing something wild and reckless?”

 

“Sorry?”

 

“Skinny dipping.”

 

“We'll freeze to death.”

 

“Not if we're quick.”

 

Serena throws the covers off herself, jumps up from the bed? bends down and rummages for clothing. She can only find Bernie's shirt and has one arm slipped inside it when Bernie calls her a thief. Says that she needs to wear something. Serena huffs, slips back out the shirt and tosses it Bernie who is standing at the other side across the bed.

 

“Oh, fuck it,” Serena says before stripping the bed of it's thin, white cover and wrapping it around her body. "Come on," she urges, running out the house and to the beach. Bernie runs after her, laughing with abandon. She's driven dizzy by the disbelief, the exhilaration that they're actually going to do this. That Serena has talked her into this. Didn't even need to talk that much. Every time the woman touches Bernie's skin a spark of electricity shoots through Bernie's system. It has the warmth of a sip of wine gliding down your throat. Serena fingers seem to have touched every inch of Bernie's skin tonight and Bernie has become intoxicated with her.

 

Bernie follows Serena. Never takes her eyes off Serena's hair flying in the wind. The white sheet that flutters behind her. Bare feet sinking into the sand, Bernie follows Serena to the sea and in that moment, knows, completely, absolutely, that she would follow this woman to the ends of the earth. They don't make it that far though. Don't make it to the sea. Serena catches her foot on the white sheet and stumbles. Falls down onto the sand. Is already laughing at her own clumsiness before her body reaches the floor.

 

“I'm fine, I'm fine,” Serena reassures a concerned Bernie when she crouches over her. “No bones broken, at the very least,” she smiles up at Bernie, her brunette curls splayed out over the sand. She clutches the white sheet tight over the top of her breasts, but it ripples slightly in the wind. The bottom of the sheet has turned over, spread itself over the sand, exposing one of her legs to mid-thigh. Her eyes are gleaming and there is a spark of gold within them. Bernie thinks she looks like a Roman Goddess, fallen from the skies.

 

When she offers Serena her hand, Serena decides she is, in fact, rather comfortable where she is and that Bernie should join her. She pulls Bernie down, next to her. Side by side, they lie back on the sand. Neither knows who reached out first, but their hands find each other’s and clasp tight. The last thing Bernie feels is Serena running her thumb over Bernie's knuckles, the last sound she hears is the rolling of the waves that they never reached and the last sight she sees is the black sky, peppered with stars and just beginning to cloud over.

 

Then: Midnight.

 

 

-

 

_Week Five (2007)_

 

The last sight Serena saw was Bernie's smile. She remembers turning her head to one side, and seeing Bernie's smile, and mirroring it on her own lips. When she reaches the rooftop, with a cautious murmur of 'Bernie?', the woman hunched on the edge who turns her head around to her isn't the woman she remembers. Her lips are pursed. Eyes black and unreadable. Jaw set firm.

 

The woman on the edge of the roof isn't the woman, either, that Serena argued with minutes ago in the bathroom.

 

“Typical,” she jokes, “30 odd years later and you still look like a bloody supermodel.” The words feel heavy and dry on her tongue even as she says them. At the same time, silly and frivolous and infinitesimal, disappearing into the night air like the crumbs of the torn napkin she releases from her hand. Bernie turns back to stare out over the rooftop.

 

“At least tell me,” Serena says, “that you've got your pain slider on zero.”

 

“I think so,” is the mumbled response.

 

Serena inhales, deep. Breathes out through her nose. Inches forward to the edge of the roof. Her head is already running wild with apologies and explanations and Bernie Wolfe, but still other thoughts force their way in. Memories. Impulses. She tries to remember what her counsellor told her - the fourth one she finally liked and settled with. Breathe, was normally the very first, unspoken step. Funny how easily you could forget a thing like that. How difficult it could become. How, within a second, it could feel like your lungs were collapsing inwards. Serena remembers the feeling. She remembers the methods as well. Acceptance. Defusion.  Treat the thoughts like the pesky nuisance they were. An old friend whining on, that you've learnt to sit next to and tune out.

 

Serena cautiously, slowly moves to the rooftop edge. To Bernie. She perches on the edge, her back to lights and people and buildings and cars beyond, her body turned to the woman next to her. Bernie's hair is no longer straight and brown and long. It's dyed blonde and falls to her chin in waves. Her fringe is even more jagged and chaotic than when she was in her early twenties. Her skin crinkles at the corner of her eyes. Bernie plays with her hands in her lap and Serena can see the blue of her veins.

 

“Why did you change?" Bernie asks, eyes looking down. “Was it another way to try and avoid me?”

 

“No, yes. Maybe.” Serena fingers pick at invisible pieces of dirt from the black skirt of her dress. “That man back there, Ric, he's an old friend. Resident here. Arrived here a ound five years ago. Never looked a day younger or older than fifty-five. He, we, some of us here, like to change once in a while. Like a bit of peace and quiet. After all, we know, at heart, we're not young anymore." Serena knows she's treading water, a lot. "What I mean is . . . I suppose you made me realise than I'm not 21 anymore. That I was trying so hard to just have fun, but I was just, I don't know, pretending. Kidding myself.”

 

“And three weeks ago, were you just pretending then?”

 

“No, Bernie, I – “

 

“But you wish it never happened. Why else would – “

 

“It hasn't been easy for me. This isn't easy for me. I - I haven't . . .you're the first  . . . " Serena stutters, before taking a deep, shuddering breathe when Bernie turns to her, looks her direct in the eye. "I've never been more than friends with a woman before and you've terrified the life out of me. Okay?”

 

“Well, what happened to the lucky lady in . . . umm Stratford, Stevenage?”

 

“Stepney.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“That was just a . . . drunken fumble. I've never dated a woman. I haven't dated anyone in a while, actually. I sort of gave up on the whole thing. Got comfortable being on my own. And, then, you turned up. You're - you were - you were the first. _My first_.”


	6. 2007 & 2044

_Week Five (2007)_

 

"It was your first time with a woman?” Bernie’s face creases in surprise.

 

Serena nods.

 

“You couldn’t tell,” Bernie smiles slightly.

 

“Just because I found myself on the Sapphic side of the court later in life, doesn’t mean I didn’t do my research. Binge watched Season Four of Orange is the New Black in four days,“ Serena says, a gleam of pride in her voice.

 

“Weren’t you nervous?”

 

“Absolutely terrified,” she admits. “Still am. In the time I’ve been here, I said I wouldn’t, I don’t know, do feelings.”

 

“How very British.”

 

“There’s something to be said for good old British reserve.”

 

“Not if it’s something your hiding behind.”

 

“Quite,” Serena adds, before taking a deep breath and placing one of her hands on Bernie’s. “You’ve turned my world upside down. And not just because you’re, well, a woman, although admittedly that was a bit of shock, but it was nothing compared to the shock of … of wanting someone. I wasn’t prepared to like someone like I like you.”

 

“You knocked me a bit for six too,” Bernie smiles, thinking back to their first meeting, thinking about Serena’s vivaciousness. “You’re a force of nature, Ms Campbell.”

 

“I’m a fool. I handled things badly. I’m sorry.”

 

“Apology accepted.” Bernie grasps Serena’s hand tighter, but Serena pulls away.

 

“Now please,” Serena chuckles nervously, “can we get off the roof?”

 

“Phobia of heights?”

 

“Something like that,” Serena admits, standing up. Brushes down the creased skirt off her dress for something to do with her hands.

 

“Okay,” Bernie stands up herself, “lead the way.”

 

-

 

It’s different this time. The sex.

 

Their bodies are older, for one. And it feels new and familiar at the same time.

 

It’s like reading a favourite book you haven’t read in years, a book you half-remember. You remember the shape of the plot, the end, but not every curve and twist towards it. And you read, savouring the parts you remember, your favourite passages – and discovering hidden meanings you never found the first time. You savour, as well, those parts you don’t remember, exploring them anew.

 

It’s like reading each other with fingertips instead of eyes. Immersing yourself into another story, entangling your own with another’s as you entangle your limbs together.

 

And this time they devour the story, quick and hurried. They devour it carelessly. With fervent kisses and frantic movements. Serena pins Bernie’s body up against the wall, moments after they stumble into Serena’s bedroom. Has her there. Has her whimpering and trembling within minutes. Has her begging her name and coming hard.

 

As soon as she has the strength, Bernie picks up Serena. Lies her on the bed, and covers her body with her own. She wants to slowly map out Serena’s body, each familiarity and in change, with her hands and her lips. Wants to take her time. Wants to tease. Wants to taste, languidly. As if they have more than an hour left, more than tonight.

 

But the moment she strips Serena of her clothing, Serena flips them over. Kisses her fiercely and takes one of Bernie’s hands, guides it between them, down to the wet heat between her thighs. Rides herself on Bernie’s fingers.

 

After she comes with a cry, Bernie works her through the aftershocks until Serena collapses on top of her. Bernie wants to make her come again, wants to watch her this time properly, study her. Wants to have Serena underneath her. She is thinking of exactly how to do that, to work her up again, gradually, torturously, to draw out every drop of pleasure from her body, to drink it up when Serena mumbles against Bernie’s sweat-sheened skin.

 

“We should meet up.”

 

Bernie immediately tenses. Remember Serena can feel it, and tries to loosen her muscles. But they tighten more when Serena raises her head and looks down into Bernie’s eyes.

 

“Where are you?”

 

“It’ll be too far.”

 

“You’re in England right?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“So, what’s the problem?”

 

“The distance is -"

 

“Try me.”

 

“Maybe another time.”

 

“Ok,” Serena rolls off Bernie, onto her back. She stares up at the ceiling. Breathes out. “Another time.”

 

Bernie desperately wants to turn to her and explain the reasoning for her answer. She wants to gently bring Serena around to face her and explain everything. She wants to lie by side like they did last time and whisper their stories into the night.

 

She wants to tell Serena of the chapters she’s hid. Briefly, she runs a finger absentmindedly over her skin. Where the scar that bisects her chest should be. Or rather, is. But she chooses this body purposefully. She’s fifty. No scar. Not yet.

 

No IED. No explosion.

 

Of course, she has other, smaller scars from when she was in the army. She has others marks like the burn mark on her just below the inside of her elbow – one she can’t remember the reason for. But it is dark, and they were quick, focused on only one thing, and maybe Serena did notice or maybe she didn’t, but she made no notice evident of the changes to Bernie’s body. Neither did Bernie to hers.

 

Neither of them mentioned the stretchmarks on Bernie’s stomach. Their silvery lines are hard to make out in the blackness of the room, but underneath the touch of fingertips, their texture, is not. Neither of them mention the faded caesarean scar low on Serena’s stomach, between her hipbones.

 

Bernie wants to say something. Serena hasn’t said anything since she turned away. Bernie knows sorry isn’t an adequate explanation but it’s the only thing she can think of it, and it’s a start. But when she looks at Serena, she realises she’s drifted off.

 

Bernie stares up at the ceiling through the darkness of the room and blinks back tears. All this isn’t real, she thinks. But God she wishes it was.

 

This world is just like a daydream you let your mind happily wander into. A daydream where you can imagine the sensations of sinking your feet into wet sand and feel the water, cool and cerulean, lapping over your toes. Bernie hasn’t felt that, the sea, against her skin for so long. Years.

 

And now Serena wants to meet up in real life. See her in real life. And she can’t. Bernie won’t let her. She remembers Serena’s words earlier that evening. I wasn’t prepared to like someone. And Bernie likes Serena back, more than likes her back. But if Serena sees her, the real her, she won’t like Bernie anymore for sure. She’ll never see Bernie the same way again. She’ll see her for what she truly is. A woman riddled with regret. A woman haunted by all her mistakes, everything she’s fucked up, everything she’s destroyed. She’s surrounded by the dirt and debris and suffering the scars.

 

And all this destruction, she’s engineered herself. Her life is just ruins now, and she has no one to blame but herself. She’s the architect of her own loneliness. Major Berenice Wolfe, premium member of club screw-up. What would Serena think if she knew, lovely and brave and vibrant and beautiful Serena, what would she think of Bernie if she knew what Bernie had done? If she knew Bernie as she really was? An old, broken woman. Of course, you don’t get to her age without a few scars, a few fractures. Everyone’s a little broken at her age. But you paper over the cracks. Pretend the pain meant something. Did something worthwhile. Built character. Resilience.

 

But sometimes pain is just pain.

 

And Bernie’s had decades to do nothing but to think and think and think about the pain she’s caused to the ones she cares about. Everywhere you turn it seems your bound to hurt someone, and she doesn’t want to hurt Serena. And she will. It’s inevitable. The longer she stays with Serena, the more they met, the closer they will get to Bernie fucking it all up.

 

Bernie winces at the thought. Squeezes her eyes shut. She tries to find distraction in the sound of the sea, but it’s turbulent tonight. She hears the waves lash against the rocks. She hears rain pounding on the roof. The roaring wind whips up the rain and tosses great handfuls of it here and there with no thought to the chaos it creates, rattling window panes  ripping the leaves off trees.

 

Bernie sits up and turns to the bedside cabinet. The digital clock there is blank and she fumbles for the switch. 23:59. The blue glow of the numbers softens the darkness. When she shifts back to look at Serena Bernie finds that she has, in her sleep, turned over on her front and the light from the clock falls on her bare back. Bernie is just reaching out a hand tentatively to trace the lines there, some pink, some white, some deep, some long, from her shoulders to just underneath her shoulder blades and if it was light, she could just discern the fainter, smaller crescent-shaped scars beneath the cuts, trace them both with her fingertips but the clock soundlessly changes before she can.

 

Midnight. Her hand hovers mid-air, and all the words, all the secrets, all the confessions Bernie wanted to tell Serena remain unsaid.

 

_2044 (Present Day)_

 

She wakes up alone. Would cry, if she could.


	7. 2044 & 1987

_2044 (present day)_

 

Her blasted knee, Serena curses, as she hobbles down the stairs, never once loosening her death-clutch on the bannister. (She has learnt her lesson, and it was more humiliating than painful, despite the cracked rib.)

 

“Ms Campbell, you should really take the lift or at least have one of us escort you?” Serena stops listening halfway through the carer’s (Lucy, Lucinda, Lucia? She can’t remember) sentence. She’s not dead yet, Serena wants to shout back. But the carer is a sweet girl. Doesn’t deserve for Serena to bite her head off. She has short blonde hair and an eager smile and reminds Serena of another young girl she knew many years ago. (A girl Serena didn’t treat with enough consideration. Enough kindness.) So, Serena pretends merely to have not have heard the carer. Blame it on dodgy hearing.

 

She hobbles down the stairs some more. Curses her throbbing knee some more. This one’s not going too. Not like her left one. Her left one which is now her new one, courtesy of what was left of her pension bedsides the bills for this place. (After the crash of 2020, the NHS limped on, bloody and beaten for an admirable number of years, but it inevitably fell to its knees and never got up again. She’s pretty sure Aneurin Bevan’s hasn’t stopped turning in his grave since. Serena’s half convinced the breakdown of the welfare state was to blame for Ric Griffin’s third and final heart attack. At least he outlived Donald Trump. She’d said that at his funeral, through laughter and tears, as she lay down the flowers, ignoring the creak of left knee. Something which soon earned her a trip to the hospital and x-rays for her ribs.)

 

Finally, her stick connects with the ground, level, solid ground. And then her feet. She can see the reception desk, the entrance doors. The carer, who has followed her and moved past her, looks at her with concern.

 

“You’re out today, aren’t you?” The carer smiles.

 

“Well, I hope so,” Serena says. “I haven’t just put my gladrags on for the fun of it.”

 

“You look lovely.” Serena nearly laughs at that, but swallows it back at the last second. Instead, she pats the girl on her shoulder and smiles. Serena’s certain she hasn’t looked even vaguely lovely in a good two decades. Insomnia saw to that, then the simple rules of nature. She’s sure her face has more lines on it than a map of Great Britain. Her eyes are hooded, her lips thin – she managed a dab of lipstick, shiraz red, this morning, even though the arthritis has left her little finger hooked and permanently frozen. Her hair, cropped close to her scalp, is grey, a tonally uneven, but an unmistakable grey.

 

She’d hoped, in her youth, to be one of the woman whose hair turned snow-white. She’d also promised herself that she’d say fuck it and dye her hair whatever colour she liked, orange, red, blue, whatever in her old age, just for the fun of it. To show that there was life in her yet. But she hasn’t dyed her hair in three decades. Didn’t see the point no more. Didn’t have the energy no more. She joked to the doctor that if her hair did fall out due to the chemo, then at least there wouldn’t be much to miss. He didn’t laugh. Didn’t smile. Just gave her some leaflets and stressed the importance of having someone close by to talk to, to support her. A family member. A good friend, he’d said. All gone, Serena replied. Well, for now. The day of her diagnosis she sorted out her will. Her last wishes. Got given some more leaflets – this time for San Junipero. ‘Where the end is never the end’. She signed up for the trial. Met Bernie.

 

And now here she is, in an electric taxi, escorted by another carer, on her way to see Bernie. More than nervous than she’d ever admit.

 

-

 

_1987 (Week Six)_

 

“Next week it is,” Bernie lowers her cigarette from her lips. “I’m getting married.”

 

They are perched on the edge of the veranda, facing the sea. The sun is sinking behind the horizon. The sun blazes amber. Crowned with circles of red. “

 

"Next week? To Dom? Sure, you’re going through with it?” Serena shuffles closer to Bernie, so that they are said by side. Her black negligee does little to ward off the wind that picks up every now and again, a bit too chilly for her liking, as the night closes in.

 

"I have to," Bernie murmurs.

 

“You have to?”

 

Bernie nods. “He really is a good guy. I mean, my family don’t approve but they can’t stop us.”

 

“Why would they want to stop you?”

 

“It’s complicated, I can’t –”

 

“Oh,” Serena teases, unable to keep out the note of frustration in her voice, “a woman of mystery. How interesting. Sworn to secrecy, are you?”

 

“Always am. My speciality.” Bernie shrugs in self-deprecation. Takes a drag of her cigarette. Stares for a moment at the sun, half swallowed by the sea. Her voice cracks. “All those years hiding who I was and -”

 

“Shush.” Serena pulls Bernie close and presses a kiss to her cheek. Rests their foreheads together as she curls her arm around Bernie’s back.

 

“Besides,” Bernie chuckles – has to, otherwise she feels she would cry. “You’re a fine one to talk. You say you’re just passing, but never how long for.”

 

“For how long I have left.” Serena draws back from Bernie and inhales deeply. “They tell me three months. It’s . . . spread everywhere. But they said that three months before six months ago,” she smirks. “Doctors today, they don’t know nothing. Truly, I mourn for the profession. A good doctor is a dying breed.”

 

“You talk from experience?”

 

“I was one. Long time ago.”

 

“What field? Department?”

 

“I was a vascular surgeon. And department? Picking up the ED’s mess. No, sorry, I believe the technical term is AAU."

 

“Did you like it?”

 

“Day in, day out, dealing with NHS politics, trudging through endless paperwork and red tape, being expected to perform miracles in theatre despite a desperate lack of trauma facilities. Oh, and being constantly talked down by every man in a suit even if he's barely out of nappies and never held a scalpel in his life," Serena says, "And that was the good days.”

 

Bernie chuckles. “It can't have been all bad.”

 

“I suppose,” Serena says, taking a drag of her cigarette. A silence settles between them for a minute or two, before Bernie turns to Serena. “You say tourist, but afterwards, you’ll stay here, right?”

 

“No. I told you. When my time’s up, my time’s up.”

 

“But that’s crazy – I mean – why?”

 

“It’s complicated.”

 

“Touché. But . . . why?” Bernie asks again, unable to understand why anyone would give this place up.

 

“It’s not as strange as you might think, choosing not to pass over. A lot of people don’t come here. You said your husband refused on religious grounds. Edward, my ex, refused too. He died five years ago.”

 

“You never said.”

 

“Didn’t I? Well, he died and he had the opportunity to come here. To San Junipero. Didn’t wanna take it. He said there were things he believed in, and things he didn’t believe in. And this place was one of them. He was a Doctor too. Life had its end, he thought. You can fix it, improve it, prolong it with medicine but ultimately, you die. That’s science. That’s nature.”

 

“Did he take the trial run?”

 

“Refused flat-out.”

 

“God," Bernie sighs, "I didn’t know if I wanted to try it but . . . I mean . . . I’ve never been good at staying in one place for too long. I had to get away. Had to do something.”

 

“Get away from what?”

 

“Everything.”

 

“No, really, where are you? Really?" Serena implores. "And don’t give me that miles away, on another planet bollocks."

 

“London.”

 

“And here I thought you were holed up in a little village in the Scottish Highlands with only one shop and twelve residents.”

 

“Where are you?"

 

"Holby. It’s a city by –”

 

“I’ve heard of it," Bernie works to keep her voice casual despite the memories Serena's mention of the city have conjured in her mind. She has more than passing knowledge of the place. Part of her wants to tell Serena all those things she couldn't last week, as they lay in bed together, and part of her is too terrified too.

 

Thankfully, the opportunity to is taken from her when Serena replies. “So, you know it’s not far then? I could just pop in.”

 

“I don’t want you to.”

 

“What? Why?”

 

“I just don’t think it’s a good idea. Here, I’m not like I am in," Bernie gestures vaguely, "I'm not like I am in real life.”

 

"No one is. That’s sort of the point of this place. Aren’t you curious?”

 

“Please, Serena. You won’t want to – Can’t we just keep . . . this . . . confined to Saturday nights. Forget about the outside. Say no more about it.”

 

“You’re scared of meeting? You terrified me Bernie Wolfe, and I’m dying. You terrified a dying woman. And you made me realise, I don’t want to run away from this anymore.”

 

“That’s what you don’t want," Bernie levels, "You don’t know what you do want.”

 

“It’s the same thing.”

 

“Not it’s not.”

 

“I want you. I want to meet you.” Serena wipes away a tear from her cheek. “Let me come visit. We can be scared together.” She leans into Bernie again, tightens her arm around her. “It something isn't even a tiny bit scary, it’s not worth doing. Please, let me come and say hello.”

 

“Okay,” Bernie murmurs. Tears prick hot at her eyes, but she blinks them back. She stubs out her cigarette in the sand. Leans into Serena’s embrace.

 

The sun has set and left the sky black. The moon is wide and bright. The sea sparkles beneath it.

 

“Brave new world,” Bernie murmurs.

 

“Brave new world,” Serena repeats, remembers that that was on the leaflets for San Junipero too. _Brave new world._

 

-

 

_2044 (present day)_

 

“You must be Serena,” a man in a white coat shakes her hand.

 

“I guess I must.”

 

“She’s waiting for you.”

 

“Thank you.”

 

The man leads her to a room and swipes a card across the door. “She won’t be able to physically respond in anyway, but she can hear you.”

 

Serena strides into the room, ignoring the pain in her knee. Everything around her is a sterile white. The walls, the floor, the bedsheets, the bed, the curtains. Even the sunlight streaming through the window. The only sound apart from the rap of her walking stick is the machine. Bernie’s machine. Serena inches closer to the woman that occupies the sole bed. Her body is still as ice. Looks carved out of it. The wrists that poke out hospital gown sleeves are twig-thin. Bernie’s cheekbones aren’t defined, aren’t delicate, like they were, they are just bones, far too prominent beneath transparent skin. The only colour is the brown of Bernie’s eyes, deep and almost black, but even they sink, wide and vacant, into Bernie’s gaunt face. Serena leans over and brushes back Bernie’s fringe, wispy and snow-white. She presses her lips to Bernie’s forehead.

 

“Hello stranger.”


	8. 2044 & 1987 (part two)

_2044 (Present Day)_

 

“Uh . . . Hello. Excuse me. Is it . . . Serena?”

 

On her way out of the hospital, Serena turns around to find a man in his fifties, dressed in the signature brown of the hospital scrubs.

 

“It is.”

 

“I’m Dom,” the man smiles.

 

“You’re Dom?”

 

The man nods.

 

“Goodness,” is all Serena can think to say. The only thought she can seem to process is that she’ll have to, at some point, when they’re back in San Junipero, tease Bernie about marrying a toy-boy over 20 years her junior.

 

“I think it’s great,” the man continues, “that you came over to see here before she passes over. Even her children don’t – “

 

“She’s passing over?” Serena interjects, brow creasing. “When?”

 

“Uh . . .” Dom searches for words, knowing he’s just let out a secret. Or at least one that Bernie hasn’t told Serena.

 

“Let’s go grab a coffee, shall we, Ms –”

 

“Campbell. And yes, I think we should.”

 

-

 

“She didn’t tell you?” Dom leads Serena through the cafeteria, to a table in the corner.

 

“No, she did not.”

 

“She said she was just visiting.”

 

“More like sampling a trial run.” Dom sets two cups of coffees on the table and begins to draw a chair out for Serena. Is stopped by a arch of an eyebrow. _I’m not that past it as to be unable to sit down by myself._

 

“And now she wants it to be more than a trial?”

 

“I think that was always the plan. At least, she told me after the first time she visited that she wanted to stay. Permanently.” Dom explains as he sits down. “We talk on the comm box. I mean we have done for the past three years. I never met her . . . before.”

 

“What happened?”

 

“She hasn’t told you?”

 

Serena shakes her head. Draws her chair in closer.

 

“She was in the army. Major Berenice Wolfe. Served in Iraq, Afghanistan as a trauma surgeon. Best in the country, they say. But, one day, she got caught in an IED explosion. Her vehicle got turned over. She was flown back to England. Underwent surgery, but . . .” Dom trails off.

 

“It went wrong.” Serena clutches her coffee cup, her head reeling from the new information. When she’d told Bernie she was a Doctor, Bernie had said nothing. Despite the fact, in another life, they could have worked im the same hospital together, even on the same ward together. Serena can barely process everything, Bernie in the army, Bernie as a trauma surgeon, let alone the news of her accident. What it had done to her.

 

“She was 51. Nearly thirty years ago now,” Dom goes on. “She just . . . lost everything in an instant. Her whole life.”

 

 

Serena can’t imagine it. Doesn’t want to. Three decades paralysed in bed. No wonder Bernie was so reserved, so shy the first days Serena met her. No wonder she wants another life in San Junipero when her own was cut short.

 

“So,” Serena asks, “about this marriage?”

 

“Well, you know how the rules keep changing for euthanasia cases? There’s a triple lockdown. You gotta have a sign off from the doc, the patient, a family of the patient. It’s meant to stop people from passing over just because they prefer San Junipero flat-out,” Dom explains. “Anyway, Bernie’s family . . . they’re . . . you know . . .”

 

“No, I don’t. She told me she had a husband. He died.”

 

“Yeah. Couple of years ago. He wouldn’t sign the papers.”

 

“Religious grounds?”

 

“Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know. I think he did it for same reason he wouldn’t divorce her.”

 

“She wanted a divorce? Was there another woman?”

 

“Sort of.”

 

“Sort of?”

 

“Marcus didn’t cheat. Bernie did. With a woman in her squad. Another army girl. Alex Dawson. They’d hid it for years, I think, but after the IED it all came out. Alex visited her in hospital, and one of her kids worked it out. It was five days after the operation. She was blown up, paralysed and outed within all of a week.”

 

“Good god.”

 

“Her children, Charlotte and Cameron, they struggled to come to terms with it all. They took their dad’s side. Marcus poisoned them against Bernie. Charlotte hasn’t visited in years. Cameron’s only really just begun to see her regularly. Now Marcus is gone, the third sign off falls to any adult children. Bernie asked Cameron, but it’s . . . difficult, no matter if he loves her – and he does. It’s just, no child dreams off . . . well . . . you know?”

 

“Signing their parent’s death warrant?”

 

“Exactly.”

 

“And that’s where you come in? A spouse, instead of a blood relation.”

 

“Yeah. But don’t worry,” Dom jokes, “I’ve haven’t got my sights on your girl – or any fortune. I don’t really have my sights set on women in general.”

 

“You’re gay?”

 

“Yeah. Me and Bernie aren’t really a match made in heaven. You two however, she talks about you all the time.”

 

Serena’s cheeks colour. “She does?” She clears her throat, recollects herself and changes the subject. “So, are you wearing a suit tomorrow?”

 

Dom laughs. “The ceremony’s on my coffee break. I never found anyone to make an honest man out of me so I just figured you know, what’s the harm?”

 

“You’re a good man.”

 

“It’s the least I could do, right?”

 

Serena sets her coffee cup down. Looks down at the table, but keeps her voice as clear and sweet as possible. “Think you could hook us up to the system. Just a little while, before she passes?”

 

“You can still see her afterwards. I mean, there’s no limit.”

 

”I know,” Serena looks him directly in the eye and flashes him her most charming smile, “but can you?”

 

“Seriously, it’s so tight around here. They monitor every – ”

 

“I only want a moment.”

 

“I’ll see what I can do.”

 

“Thank you.”

 

-

 

 _No one wants to sign their parent’s death warrant._ Serena’s words to Dom spiral around in her mind as Dom leads her back to Bernie’s room. She thinks back to her mother and her request. Serena would have done anything for her mother, but not that. She knew the arguments, a patient’s last wishes, an exercise of their autonomy, dying with dignity, an end to the pain, an end to a life decreasing, day by day, in quality.

  
But she couldn’t do it. Couldn’t live with herself afterwards. She was a doctor then, and in her mind, it went against every teaching she’d ever had and every principle she’d ever held. Her job was to save lives. To fight and fight and fight for the lives of her patients. Never to surrender when there was still hope, however small and flickering.

  
She knows vascular dementia is heredity – she wondered if it would ever develop in her – but she will never know what her mother suffered through. The cancer eats away at her, at her ovaries, but it is not a disease that eats at her memories. And she is thankful for that.

  
There are things people don’t tell you about bereavement. How you fall asleep and dream of someone, bring them back to life. How it feels so utterly real. How the mind can configure dozens of realities, sight changes in the narrative that mean her daughter is alive. Reasons for recovery, reasons for her absence. She ran off, ashamed of her drug abuse or went to rehab, but now she is back. Now she is within Serena’s arms.

  
No one tells you how brilliant a story-teller a bereaved mind is, or how plausible, how thought-out, how real these stories are. No one tells you what it’s like to wake up, believing the story, the altered memories and to realise the truth. To have your loved one ripped from this world, from you, all over again.

  
Serena has had those dreams, has woke up in the morning and discovered their cruel fiction but still, later, willingly induced them through alcohol and sleeping pills.

  
If she had had dementia, she could not have borne it. Her conscious mind losing its grasp on reality and fiction, not knowing what to trust. She could not have lost her daughter, repeatedly. Thinking she was here one moment, realising she was gone the next.

  
After nearly eight decades on this earth, Serena understands what drove her mother to those depths, what made her want to give up. To ask Serena to help her die. Ask for the DNR.

  
Serena knows what it is like to crave death over life.

  
It is why she asked for five minutes with Bernie. It is why she smiles as they hook her up to the system. Press a coin shaped white piece to her forehead that transmits her consciousness to another reality.

  
She runs out of the beach-house, pushes through white, gauzy curtains and steps down the veranda. The sand is white and warm beneath her bare feet. The sun is hot on her back and the water beyond glitters aquamarine. This, Serena thinks, as she takes Bernie’s hands, this is not death, this is life.

  
For Bernie, it is life over death. A second chance she never had. The years she never lived, alone and trapped in the hospital.

  
“I talked to Dom,” Serena explains, breathe uneven. She has a milliom questions she wants to ask Bernie, about the IED, about Alex, about Marcus but she knows time is short. They have five minutes.

  
“You’re passing over tomorrow?” Serena asks Bernie.

  
“Yeah. Couple of hours after the wedding.” Bernie shifts from foot to foot, excited, nervous, terrified, and guiltly at witholding it all from Serena. 

 

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

  
“Shush.” Serena places a finger on Bernie’s lips. “Berenice Griselda Wolfe,” she sinks slowly down to one knee – in this universe it is no longer painful – and looks up at Bernie. “You are the most fantastic, fearless person I have ever met.”

 

Serena inhales deeply. “Wanna marry me instead?”


	9. 1987 (part three)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where the warnings come into play. I don't think much will come as a shock though. Most of the events, like the end, do follow the episode. And in this universe Serena did go through her depression without Bernie. Canonically, Edward, the only person who could truly understand the pain, did also abandon her. (The show was wrong to make Serena's calls to him look irrational and crazed, when they were plausible, if painful for Edward.)

_1987 (Week 7)_

 

The first and last time they meet in real life, Serena kills Bernie.

  

She helps her pass on. Signs the forms as Mrs Serena Wolfe and holds Bernie’s hand as she slips away, from this world to the next.

 

‘. . . to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold and sickness and in heath, in good times and in woe, for richer for poorer . . .’

 

The first thing Bernie sees when she opens her eyes is a flock of gulls. Hundreds of them scatter the pale blue sky. Water ripples around her feet and she looks down at the crystal-clear water. Sits down on the sand so the waves lap at her toes. Closes her eyes and tilts her head back. She feels the sun hot on her skin and hears the squawk of gulls as they circle overhead. When she opens her eyes, the sky is empty. A horizon of endless blue stretches in front of her.

 

When it starts to darken, soft yellow suffusing into the blue as the sun sinks low, there is the honk of a car horn behind her.

 

She turns around to see Serena. She is young again, now, in her early twenties. The same age she was when Bernie first met her.  Long brown curls tumble around her shoulders, their colour a sharp contrast to the white of her dress.

 

“Hey, Major.”

 

Bernie beams. Runs up to her.

 

“You didn’t dress up to see me?” Serena teases.

 

“Oh!” Bernie’s eyes flicker down to her t-shirt and shorts. When she looks back up, they have changed into a dress with lace sleeves and a flowing skirt. Her hair has changed too, a longer, brighter cord of blonde hair wrapped up into a chignon. She drops thirty years in an instant. Becomes as young as Serena.

 

And when Serena offers her hand, Bernie takes it without a second thought.

 

Thinks this is forever. Thinks wrong.

 

-

 

They are perched on the boot of her car, watching the sunset. Serena thinks that once you’ve seen one sunset, you’ve seen them all, but Bernie's smile, the wonder in her eyes, when the sky bleeds from orange to red to black, is something Serena knows she could never tire of. Bernie hops off the boot of the car, spins around in the sand.

 

"Don't you think it's beautiful here?"

 

"Yes," Serena agrees - because even though the endless stretch of beach and ocean feels far too like a movie scene for her to feel at home here - Bernie is twirling around in a wedding dress, laughing her glorious laugh. Deliriously happy.

 

"Careful." Serena quips. "Or you're fall."

 

Dizzily, Bernie stumbles over to the car. Plants her hands either side of Serena's legs.

 

"I don't care," Bernie leans in close. Her hands drift to Serena's thighs, encourage them to part so she can slip in between her legs.

 

"I love it here," Bernie says.

 

"You've been here before."

 

"But now I live here." Bernie drops a kiss to Serena's lips. "Be with me."

 

"I am with you now," Serena chuckles. Cups Bernie's face with her hands.

 

"That's not what I mean. Pass over."

 

Serena's hands slip away.

 

"When it's your time," Bernie clarifies. "Stay here with me."

 

"Can't we just enjoy tonight?"

 

"It's almost midnight," Bernie steps back. Spreads her arms wide and gestures around them to the darkness of the night.

 

Serena slides off the car. Grins impishly. "Then let's not waste it by talking."

 

Bernie takes Serena's hands, stops them from encircling her waist. "Why do you always do this?"

 

"Do what?"

 

"Run away from things. It's like you can't once just stop for breath." Bernie squeezes Serena's hands gently. "Stay, here. With me. You won't have to run anymore."

 

"I told you, I'm just a visitor."

 

"What, a couple of months, then what? You're gone."

 

"We're not discussing this." Serena pulls her hands back from Bernie's grip.

 

"Just gone. You could have forever."

 

"Forever. Who can even make sense of forever?"

 

"However, long you want then. I mean, you can remove yourself like this." Bernie snaps her fingers.

 

"I'm going," Serena snaps. Pivots on foot.

 

"Serena, please, wait, " Bernie pleads. "I'm sorry. It's just . . . I got this chance. _We_ gotthis chance. And you just want to throw it away?"

 

"I know what this means to you Bernie, I do. But you need to understand. You want this . . . _world_. I don't. Many people don't. Your husband, my husband." 

 

"Is that what this is about? Edward?" Bernie questions, struggling to understand Serena's shift in mood. "Because that was his choice Serena."

 

"Don't," Serena warns Bernie to stop.

 

"Did he feed you some bullshit about how you shouldn't pass over? How it's not moral or ethical, because it's your decision."

 

" _Exactly,"_ Serena says, turns away from Bernie and to the car. "Leave me alone." 

 

"You married me." Bernie's voice is faint and broken. Serena feels her heart clench painfully. Lies anyway.

 

"It was just a gesture," Serena sweeps a hand along her wedding dress. "All this. To help you pass over." 

 

"An act of pity?"

 

"An act of kindness."

 

"Well, it's not kind to just leave and disappear. I like you Serena, God, no, I more than like you." 

 

Serena doesn't reply. Her eyes drop down. Her hand clutches at the handle of the car door. 

 

"Robbie was right about you," Bernie raises her voice. "You really don't do feelings, do you?"

 

"You think I won't stay because of Edward?" Serena whips around to face Bernie. "You're right. I loved him once, and I think he did, for a moment, love me. We spent far more years out of love, though, than in it. Some days I hated his guts. But there was one love we shared. One love we always would." 

 

Serena takes a breath. Steadies herself and blinks back the tears that already threaten to overspill.

 

"We had a daughter. Elinor. Always difficult, always beautiful. She died when she was only twenty. Still a child really, for all her talk, at least to me. Always my baby girl."

 

"Serena, I - "

 

"Me and Edward, we were long divorced by then. But he was the only one, the only person, that knew what it felt like. We finally understood each other properly for the first time." Serena voice trembles, but she forces herself to carry on. "I think that's why he buggered off abroad as soon as the funeral finished. Avoided me for years. Couldn't stand me. I reminded him too much of himself. I reminded him too much of what he'd lost. His drinking got worse. It was what killed him in the end. He poisoned himself with it. Liver disease. I buried him ten years after Elinor. You think you're the only person who's suffered? Go fuck yourself."

 

"I didn't know."

 

"Didn't think to," Serena corrects Bernie. "You know," Serena rages, "when he was dying, when they offered him this, to pass over, pass through, he said "How can I? When she missed out how can I?" And so he went. And I wish I could believe that he's with her now, that they're together, but I don't. There's nothing. No magical sky fairy inviting them into heaven. _Nothing_."

 

Tears are streaming her face, but Serena doesn't bother to wipe them away.

 

"I pitied you," Serena admits. "That's the truth. I pitied you. And now you give me some sales pitch about how fucking peachy forever could be?"

 

"I'm sorry," Bernie stammers, tears burning her own eyes and a lump burning her throat.

 

"You wanna spend forever somewhere where nothing matters. Just partying an drinking and fucking, trying to feel anything? Go ahead," Serena spits. "But I gone. I'm out."

 

She opens the car door and climbs into the driver's seat.

 

"Serena," Bernie calls. "I love you."

 

Serena drives off. Pretends she didn't hear. It doesn't change anything. Doesn't make her feel any better. She speeds down the empty roads. Passes fifty. Sixty. Seventy.

 

She thinks of swerving the car. Letting go of the wheel. One split-second decision, then darkness.

 

Nothing like her first time at it. Nothing like her careful planning. The pills. The booze. The quanity of both measured to perfection. 

 

She'd settled everything. Meant to last it out for good. Retreat into the silence of her house and slip away into her bedroom. Lock the door and block it all out. Forever.

 

But she'd woken up to the harsh white lights of a hospital. To an I.V. in her arm and a machine recording her heartbeat. Each beep taunting her pathetic failure. 

 

And everyone, her friends, her collegues, the entire hospital, knew. They would have either way. If she'd succeeded, of course they would have known. But she wouldn't have had to face them.

 

The shame of it all.

 

She'd woken up to endless words of pity. Ric, Raf, Hanseen all seeing to her and trying to help and understand. Raf buying her flowers. Ric offering to take her out, as soon as she was discharged, so they could have a chat over a meal, good, expensive food. Hanseen sitting by her and telling that he'd failed her, that he and this hospital would do there very best by her from now on. He would help her find therapy, he promised solemnly, only the top practitioners in the country. He would give her as much time as she needed off work, and have a position, as equal in status as her old one, or any other one she wanted, one with less duties or responsbilites or hours, ready for her whenever she was ready to return.

 

She used that against him. Manipulated him to let her return within weeks. Far earlier than she should have. And she knows she took advantage of his guilt and his kindness. He was lenient with her, when the trouble first began.

 

Until Serena physically assaulted an F1 and the complaints of bullyings finally needed results. Repercussions. He suspended her, he had to. Told her again, that if she sought help and there was no shame in that, he and this hospital would welcome her back with open arms. 

 

That was the start of her spiral down. Within eight months she left Holby. Left medicine, forever. 

 

After Hanseen suspended her, she went up to the roof of the hospital. Sobbing and shaking. So much that her hands couldn't even light a cigarette. 

 

She willed herself to do it. Repeated every single horrible thought she'd told herself over the past months and amplified them by a hundred. 

 

An F1 she didn't recognise appeared on the roof - probably for a sneaky cigarette break - and she stepped back from the edge of the roof. Fled quickly away so the F1 couldn't see her tears, her stupid, pathetic tears. Her stupid, half-hearted attempt. 

 

She didn't tell anyone about it for years, not her GP - who always asked, cold, flat and direct as if reading from a series of tick or cross questions because he was, 'Have you self-harmed recently? Have you made plans to end your own life?" She shook her head and didn't tell anyone, not until her fifth therapist. Not until the end of her life was no longer in her hands, but dictated by the cancer.

 

 - 

 

Bernie watches Serena drive away. Their marriage wasn't just an empty ceremony, a means to an end, not for her. She pulls up the skirt of her wedding dress and runs. 

 

Ten minutes later she finds Serena's car parked outside the bar where they first met. Bernie is at the doorway of the bar, about to go in and search inside, when a woman screams next to her. 

 

Bernie's head whips around. She looks up to the rooftop she and Serena had shared weeks ago. Against the black of the night sky, there is a cloud of white. Serena's wedding dress. Flickering like a flame in the wind. 

 

Billowing around her as she steps off the ledge.

 

Jumps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am a bloody terrible person, I know.
> 
> Also: me, using fictional characters to cope?!? How dare you suggest such wild accusations?


	10. The Rest of It

Bernie kneels on the tarmac next to Serena. Sees nothing bloody. Nothing broken. Just Serena shivering, eyes wide. Bernie’s heart thuds. Roars in her ears like the tide. The noise rolls and falls like waves, drowns out everything else. Drowns out the words Serena is telling her. Bernie can’t hear them. They float away like the white flakes of a dead dandelion. Like the seconds that the flowers are meant to tell. 

Bernie reaches for Serena’s hand. But she disappears too and Bernie clutches air.

Midnight. Serena is gone and she is here.

-

“Serena.” Two weeks later, relief courses through Bernie as she sees Serena. “I’m so sorry, I know I said the wrong things, I did the wrong things, I . . . “

Serena waves a hand to silence Bernie. “I’ve stacked up quite the experience in the fucking-up department myself.”

Bernie laughs at that. Can’t help herself. She thought she’d never see Serena again, that weeks and weeks would pass and Bernie would never know if she lived still, or if she didn’t.

She thought the not-knowing would haunt her forever more. Like the image of Serena. Her white dress against the black of night.

“Will you?” Bernie checks her wristwatch. Five hours to midnight. “Can we . . . “

“Talk?”

Bernie nods.

“I’d like that,” Serena says.

-

They watch the sunset, like they’ve done so many times before, but this time both hardly glance at the horizon. At the sky and sea and sand. They sit just beyond the veranda of the house, side by side, in deckchairs. They share a tartan blanket over their knees and a bottle of wine between them.

“I thought you were gone for good,” Bernie admits.

Serena wants to joke that, these days, the expression is rather redundant. No one is gone for good in San Junipero, but she feels she owes Bernie more than the pretence of humour. After a fortnight of no contact. Two Saturdays where Bernie was left waiting and left wondering if Serena would ever return.  

“I just needed . . . space,” Serena toys with the pendant of her necklace.

“I understand.” Bernie bits her lips, hesitates. Decides on more honesty. It’s time enough, she thinks, after living so many lies for so long. But she looks down as she says it. “I missed you.”

“I know.” The warmth in Serena’s voice pulls Bernie’s gaze back up. “The radio silence, I – I realised that I needed to sort some things out, before I . . .” Serena’s voice tremors. “I went to visit my nephew.”

Serena’s never mentioned a nephew. Bernie doesn’t need to ask why. She sees the smile on Serena’s lips and the tears in her eyes. The love in them.

“What his name?” Bernie asks.

“Jason. He was, he is like a son to me. You would like him. He’s so clever and charming and caring and . . . “ Serena wipes away a tear. “But I lost him. Many years ago.”

“You stopped speaking?” Bernie responds instinctively. Knows how that can happen, the unthinkable with the ones you love. In the hospital, Charlotte hadn’t visited her in decades. “You lost touch with him?”

“My fault,” Serena says. “After Elinor . . . well, I pushed a lot of people away and he was one of them.

“You were grieving.”

“Still no excuse. I should have, all these years, should have tried to reconnect, but . . . he has a different life now, lives with his carer and his girlfriend. I say girlfriend he’s fifty odd. I wanted to get back in touch, I just thought I’d left it too late.”

Thought he was better off without her. The person Serena had become. Bully. Monster. Barely human. She didn’t even feel like it. Human. She didn’t recognise herself anymore. The woman she had been had broken the day her daughter died. Had spilled out of her with the tears she’d sobbed, in the hospital, at the funeral, over bottle and bottle of wine.

Until they didn’t. Until she was hollowed completely out. Until one day she organised Jason to stay at Alan’s for the week – the will was already done, she’d rewritten it after Elinor’s death, what was her share, now Jason’s – and went home to an empty house full of ghosts. And Serena one of them.

She’s never forgiven herself for what happened. Knows she never will.

Jason had forgotten his chess set and he always played chess at Alan’s when it was a Monday night. Alan had dropped him back off at the house. Had called for Serena. Then called for Alan in the car who called for an ambulance.

Serena chokes on a sob as she recalls being told what happened. How they'd saved her. Bernie moves her arm across the top of the blanket, grazes her hand against the back of Serena’s so Serena can weave their fingers together. Serena breathes in deep. Out. Studies the skin of their hands, both equally rough and creased with age.

“But I’m glad I went,” Serena’s voice breaks. “Glad I said goodbye to him.”

“Goodbye?”

“Fucking cancer. The doctor gave me days at the best, hours at the worst. And he was right this time.”

“Oh, Serena.” Bernie clutches her hand tighter. “When . . . “

“This morning. I passed over this morning.”

“You . . .” Bernie blinks back tears. “You’re here? You’re – “

Serena silences her with a kiss, brief but firm. When she draws back, she sweeps a thumb over Bernie’s cheekbone. “I’m here,” she confirms. “And I think I’m ready.”

“For what?”

“For the rest of it.”

 _The rest of it._ Something boundless, indefinable, intangible. But it will start to unfold, slowly, surely, later as they kiss under the hot stream of the shower, as they wrap towels around their bodies, hair damp and eyes sleepy. Mouths smiling as they realise the time. Way past midnight. Almost dawn.

They've never seen a sunrise together before.

They will return to the deckchairs and leave the warm and inviting bed – but it will wait, _their_ bed, where they will share their histories in the dark, where they will talk for hours and hours and revisit the stories of their past and out of the pain weave new ones with the movement of their bodies.

 _The rest of it._ Something boundless, indefinable, intangible. But, as they sit together on the beach and darkness seeps across the landscape like ink, like a canvas waiting for them to paint with their new lives, Bernie knows just how to start it. _The rest of it._

Bernie stands up and turns to Serena.

“Come on,” Bernie holds out her palm.

“What?”

Bernie tilts her head to the sea.

“You’re having a laugh.”

“You were up for it before.”

“It’s probably freezing,” Serena counters.

“I’ll do my very best to warm you up,” Bernie promises.

“I bloody hope so!” Serena laughs, still not persuaded.

Bernie crouches down, rests her hands on Serena’s knees. “Come on.”

Bernie grasps the hem of her shirt and pulls it over her head. Tosses the item on the sand.

“Now I’m _all_ for a striptease, Bernie, but –”

Bernie rises, undoes her belt and steps out her shorts. “Race you.”

Serena knows when she is losing a battle, and knows when there is another to be won. Her eyes glint.

“Okay.”

“Really?”

Serena throws off the blanket. “You’re on.”

She smiles, passes Bernie the wine glass in her hand and runs past her.

 _“Cheat!”_ Bernie darts after her. Catches up quickly, close enough to wrap her arms around Serena’s waist and hold her back. Punish her for playing unfair by trailing a line of kisses down her neck and shoulder until her knees are too weak to run. Instead, she simply reaches for Serena’s hand. The race dissolves into nothingness as they drop into a equal stride, side by side. As they near the water, their footsteps slow. The sea gleams under the moonlight. Looks beautiful and very bloody cold.

Serena tuts at Bernie’s trepidation. “Big macho army medic, like you.”

“On three,” Bernie says. “No turning back.”

“On three.”

They count down. Run.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Serena shouts at the icy waves.

Bernie grits her teeth. Wades in further and pulls Serena along until the water laps to just above their waists.

It is very fucking cold.

Bernie clasps her arms around herself. “Why do I let you talk me into these things.”

“Me?” Serena scoffs.

“ _You_ suggested skinny dipping in the first place,” a smile spreads across Bernie’s face, “and this isn’t _quite_ skinny dipping.”

Serena rolls her eyes, but feels for the button at the top of back of her dress.

“Let me,” Bernie says, before undoing the button and sliding down the zip. She lifts the dress over Serena’s head. Balls up the half-soaked material and throws it so it lands on the shore.

A cloud has glided over the moon. In the darkness, Bernie fumbles for Serena’s bra clasp.

“Front closure, dear.” Serena steps back. Her foot sinks into more sand than she anticipated and she stumbles, nearly slips. Does, when Bernie tries to help.

They manage not to go head under, but do create a spectacular splash and burst into laughter as soon as they regain their footing.

“Now, that’s one way to get more wet,” Serena smirks, unclasping her bra. Folds it and holds it in one hand. She is _not_ letting Bernie throw her bra.

Serena’s eyes trace the droplets now running between Bernie’s clavicles. Down to the scar bisecting her chest. Later, she will trace it with the tip of her finger, touch feather-light. Her mouth more insistent as it trails down Bernie’s chest, down to where Bernie needs it most. Serena will take  detours, find other scars – some from the same wars, some not – and kiss them. Let Bernie do the same for her.

The curtains will flutter wide from the open windows and the moonlight spill over their skin just like it spills over the sea, as the water swirls and licks and laps at each pebble, as the waves curl and crest and crash, shuddering to the shore with sighs equal to the softness of the ones on their lips.

_This is the rest of it._

And it’s cold and glorious and exhilarating. It’s them standing in the sea, Serena wrapping her arms around Bernie’s waist, tugging her close until their bodies are snug against each other’s. Hips to hips. Breasts to breasts.

“Now, what was that about you warming me up?” Serena teases.

“No idea,” Bernie mumbles. “You?”

“Oh, plenty.” Serena kisses Bernie and Bernie kisses her back – soft and slow and long.

Above them, the cloud slips off the moon like a dress. Reveals the skin beneath, glowing but scattered with scars – a landscape of curves and dips and creases, full of unexplored secrets that only the stars know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And they lived happily ever after. Not the stars, but Serena and Bernie, but then I suppose they are both now stars, in a way. 
> 
> -
> 
> Thanks to all those that have read and commented. This is the AU that is most close to my heart and it was lovely finally getting to write the bits that summed up the title which is from Pure Feeling by Florence and the Machine and inspired the story. It was lovely finally getting them both in the sea and under the moonlight and holding each other, because that is where they were always going. Each other's arms. Forever more.
> 
> See I'm not just about the angst. I'm one big soppy fangirl at heart.


End file.
